


Shucking Sweet Corn

by gwyllion



Category: Brokeback Mountain (2005)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-20
Updated: 2011-04-20
Packaged: 2017-12-05 02:32:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 847
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/717852
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gwyllion/pseuds/gwyllion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Last Author Standing Prompt: Bites.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shucking Sweet Corn

“You’re late,” Jack called, raising his head when he heard the truck door squeak open.

He didn’t rise from his squatting position. Instead, he smiled into the warmth that emanated from the campfire, dissipating the chill from the fall breeze that swept through the mountain valley. He had been waiting for hours, setting up the tent, organizing the gear, building the fire. His body thrummed with nervous energy, impatient to possess the man whose attention he only received for a couple weeks each year. When he no longer knew what to do with himself in camp, the silent inactivity too difficult, he had begun to cook dinner.

“Sorry,” Ennis yelled, shutting the truck door.

Sweet from the summer harvest, the golden ears of corn danced in the bubbling water that filled the dented pot perched above the heat. Jack smiled to think of how they’d tear into them later with ravenous teeth, no need for butter when the sugar corn kernels burst open on their tongues and the juices ran down their chins at the campfire. A sleeve would make do when a napkin was unavailable.

Distracting thoughts about corn and other seasonal vegetables helped him to keep his composure while he waited for Ennis. His knee jittered up and down like the needle of a sewing machine.

“Damn,” Jack breathed with enough force to make the fire flare.

He shifted on his haunches and watched Ennis stumble down the grassy slope to the campsite, juggling his fishing gear in shaky hands. It had been a long five months since their meeting last spring, and Jack knew that Ennis looked forward to the end of a long summer of drought as much as he did. The wind whipped across the lake, stinging his exposed skin and threatening to sneak beneath his brim to lift the beaten hat from his head.

“Get over here, cowboy,” Jack said, scrambling to his feet. Ennis dropped the rod and creel case. Jack took two steps forward to greet him, clamping his arms around him and thumping him soundly on the back.

This was the moment Jack had waited for as each day passed in Childress. He had dreamed about the solid feel of Ennis in his arms, the heft of the man pressing against him, the smell of horse and hay. Each night when he had dragged himself into bed with Lureen, he had dreamed of the kiss he would share with this man when they next would meet, the taste of salt and sweat. During the mundane workday, his mind rambled with the conversations they’d have when they next greeted each other. The lonely world in which they lived could be rendered less lonely if only for one week at a time.

Jack’s mouth hung open, anticipatory, when Ennis pulled back from his grasp and met him eye to eye.

“What? What is it, Ennis?” Jack asked, his tongue tracing the outline of his upper lip.

“Just want to get a look at my man,” Ennis mumbled, his jaw set firm, his eyes scanning Jack’s features as if trying to remember each childhood chicken pocked pore and every line converging like wheel spokes to the corners of his eyes. The possessive term made Jack’s heart well with pleasure. He wanted nothing more than to belong to Ennis and for Ennis to belong to him.

The days apart had been too long. The lonely hours spent driving and preparing a spread for his lover made Jack too hungry to treat their reunion as if it were as insignificant as a pine cone dropped from the highest evergreen to lie among the sea of cones that littered the ground in a Wyoming campsite. He needed to feel Ennis’s skin with an urgency born from neglect.

He slid his hands down the front of Ennis’s jacket. His fingers clenched the fabric, stained and worn thin in spots. He yanked Ennis toward him, lips crushing as the cares of the world fell away and the lonely ache was assuaged into dullness by their being together again, all the memories of the alone time forgotten for the moment.

A crow cawed in a swaying treetop, the only witness to the celebrated reunion.

Jack tore at Ennis’s jacket, peeling it from his shoulders without breaking the contact of his lips on Ennis’s mouth. He shoved his palms beneath Ennis’s shirt and clawed his fingers into the tanned flesh. Buttons popped and scattered.

During the frantic first encounter of the week only, permission had been granted for fingernails and teeth to mark ownership with scratches and bites that reclaimed one man to the other. Jack let his mouth slide over Ennis’s cheek, rough with stubble that abraded his lips, down his neck and into the firm hollow of his shoulder. He elicited a howl from Ennis when he sunk his teeth into the sweet skin.

“Mine,” Jack would say in the week that followed, tracing a finger over the crimson half-moon that he sucked there.

But as the days passed, the mark would fade into nothingness again.

**Author's Note:**

> Shucking Sweet Corn was written for Last Author Standing-2011, which I won in the category of "Movies."


End file.
